movie gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Daniel Craig in QUEER. Courtesy of A24.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Saturday Night, I Used to Be Funny, and It’s Not Me. I’m waiting to see the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer with Daniel Craig, Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door with Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, and Brady Corbet’s acclaimed third feature, The Brutalist with Adrian Brody – and I’m getting twitchy with impatience.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters.
  • Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters and now streaming.
  • Blitz: one brave, resourceful kid amid the horrors. AppleTV.
  • A Real Pain: whose pain is it? In theaters.
  • The Substance: the thinking woman’s Faust, if you can take the body horror. MUBI (free), Amazon, AppleTV.
  • Endless Summer Syndrome: there will be hell to pay. In arthouse theaters.
  • The Outrun: facing herself without the bottle. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandngo.
  • The Remarkable Life of Ibelin: totally unexpected. Netflix.
  • Saturday Night: chaos as entertainment. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • It’s Not Me: his life as an art film. Amazon, Fandango.
  • The Settlers: reckoning with the ugly past. MUBI.
  • Emilia Pérez: four women yearn amid Mexico’s drug violence. Netflix.
  • I Used to Be Funny: PTSD is no joke. Netflix, Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Kneecap: sláinte! Amazon, AppleTV.
  • Will & Harper: old friends adjust. Netflix.

WATCH AT HOME

From my Best Movies of 2024 – So Far:

ON TV

Peter Lorre, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Sydney Greenstreet in THREE STRANGERS.

Set your DVR to record the December 27 Turner Classic Movies airing of Three Strangers, a much underrated film noir from 1946, co-written by John Huston. Geraldine Fitzgerald, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre play three people who don’t know each other ando are brought together by an odd gamble. There’s a legend that, if three strangers make the same prayer to a Chinese god, he will grant a their wish. Each of the three needs money, so they partner in the purchase of a sweepstakes ticket and give it a go.

Lorre’s character is a destitute alcoholic who would buy a bar with his windfall and never leave it. The other two need to hit the jackpot, too, but their reasons are much, much darker. The ending of the story is absurdly noir for some and tragically noir for others.

The best element of Three Strangers is Geraldine Fitzgerald’s a performance as a woman who seems eccentric, until she reveals herself as dangerously unhinged. John Huston had wanted Fitzgerald for the Bridgit O’Shaughnessy role in The Maltese Falcon, and I’m glad that Mary Astor got the part instead because Astor’s performance was perfect – and maybe the best ever liar in the history of cinema. But, when you see her in Three Strangers, it becomes clear that Fitzgerald would have been a remarkably interesting Bridgit, too.

Lorre and Greenstreet were first paired five years earlier in The Maltese Falcon (Greenstreet’s very first movie, at age 62), and Three Strangers was one of eight more films that took advantage of their chemistry.

The director was Jean Negulesco, who knew his way around the noir genre (The Mask of Dimitrios, Nobody Lives Forever, Johnny Belinda and Road House). Three Strangers is plenty entertaining, and Fitzgerald is a revelation.

Geraldine Fitzgerald in THREE STRANGERS.

IT’S NOT ME: his life as an art film

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Photo caption: Leos Carax and Denis Lavant in IT’S NOT ME. Courtesy of Janus Films.

I generally only write about feature-length films, but there’s a lot of interest among cinephiles for the mid-length It’s Not Me. A European museum asked the artistic renegade filmmaker Leos Carax for a project that answers the question, Who are you? Although the title of this film is cheeky, It’s Not Me is Carax’s reflection on what has formed him – cinema, the 20th century, his Jewishness – and who he is – an artist, a parent, a moral critic.

It’s Not Me is rapidly-paced montage of bits from classic cinema, Carax’s own films (augmented by some new footage) and historical stills and clips. There’s even cell phone footage of his daughter as a child and now playing the piano as an adult.  It is a curated mush mash, decidedly not as random as it sometimes seems. The clips are interspersed with bold color titles a la Jean-Luc Goddard. Movies can be LIKE fever dreams; this one may BE an actual fever dream.

Carax is known for Holy Motors, which I mostly liked, and Annette, which I didn’t. One thing is for sure – each Carax movie will be like nothing you’ve seen before.

Carax isn’t usually very political, but here he explicitly vents his hatred for haters like Hitler and current right wing, nationalist leaders. There’s a very creepy scene where a mother reads her kids a bedtime story that applauds Hitler’s Final Solution. There’s footage of the 1939 pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, and of the corpses of contemporary would-be immigrant children sloshing on a European beach.  Tough stuff.

It’s Not Me runs only 42 minutes, but there’s almost two minutes of opening credits, and then the closing credits start at the 37-minute mark.  After the closing credits, there’s a a final 2-minute puppet performance that is brilliant, even if I have no idea why Carax included it.

Denis Lavant reprises his role as Monsieur merde, the outré character in Holy Motors and other Carax films. If you want to know just how outré, read my post on Holy Motors.

Clips of the 27-year-old Juliette Binoche from the 1991 Carax film The Lovers on the Bridge remind us what a breath-taking beauty Binoche has been in every stage of her career.

It’s Not Me is streaming on Amazon and Fandango.

I USED TO BE FUNNY: PTSD is no joke

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Photo caption: Rachel Sennott in I USED TO BE FUNNY. Courtesy of Utopia.

In the Canadian indie I Used to Be Funny, Sam is a standup comedian (played by Rachel Sennott, a real life standup comedian). Sam has been suffering the effects of PTSD for a year, and is existing with the kindness of her two comedian roommates. She’s been unable to work, write or leave the house, and it’s a major achievement to take a shower.

Through flashbacks, we learn how she got to her present condition. Sam had taken a day job as a nanny for a 13-year-old girl, Brooke (Olga Petsa). Brooke is a pistol anyway, but her mom is on her deathbed and her father is stricken with both grief and the bewilderment as to how to meet the needs of his teenage daughter, who is already troubled by the mom’s illness and soon to go off the rails completely. At first Brooke responds encouragingly to the hip young Sam. But then, everyone’s life is upended by the traumatic event. (That event is depicted over an hour into the film, but the audience has surely guessed what it is by then. )

Will Sam work through her PTSD and become functional again? Will Brooke be lost to her self-destructiveness?

I Used to Be Funny is the first feature for television writer-director Ally Pankiw. Pankiw accurately portrays the disabling pain of a PTSD sufferer and the helplessness of adults dealing with an out-of-control teenager. Pankiw finally gets us to a redemptive ending, but there’s a lots of emotional pain and drama on the way.

In case you forget that this is a Canadian film, you’ll notice that the comedian roommates, the estranged boyfriend, Brooke’s aunt and the folks at the comedy club are exceedingly nice. Even the troubled teen, a punk drug dealer and sexist cops are very nice for their types.

I watched I Used to Be Funny because I so enjoyed Sennott’s performance in Saturday Night. Now we know that Sennott has the emotional range to play the extremes of the spectrum – a depressive here and a sexy and masterful creative in Saturday Night. Both of those characters are quick-witted, and Sennott is very believable, of course, as a head comedy writer and as a standup comic.

I Used to Be Funny is streaming on Netflix, Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

SATURDAY NIGHT: chaos as entertainment

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Photo caption: Cooper Hoffman (kneeling), Lamorne Morris, Cory Michael Scott. Ella Hunt, Emily Fairn, Kim Matula and Dylan O’Brien in SATURDAY NIGHY. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

It’s hard to imagine, but fifty years ago there was no Saturday Night Live. There wasn’t much edginess on TV – All in the Family and M.A.S.H. were controversial -and a live performance telecast was unthinkable. Saturday Night depicts the first telecast of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975, and it’s quite a story.

Television network executives, always trying not to upset sponsors and affiliate stations, constricted creativity. By 1975, American music, movies, literature and fashion, had all moved on to reflect the turbulence and societal revolution of the 1960s and the Vietnam/Watergate Era of the early 70s. TV was still too square for the culture. There was nothing on TV like Portnoy’s Complaint, Midnight Cowboy, Frank Zappa or The National Lampoon. There was an opening for edgier content that would appeal to then twenty-something Baby Boomers.

As Saturday Night tells it, the timeslot was only available because NBC was in a contract dispute with Johnny Carson and needed a temporary replacement, a show that would be disposable when The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson returned. Into the breach stepped twenty-something showrunner Lorne Michaels (Gabriel Labelle) with an idea for a sketch-comedy show with musical guest performances, to be broadcast live, which the NBC’s Radio City complex was not set up for.

Saturday Night captures the chaos and risks of SNL’s debut. There were staggering technical issues with live television broadcast. The human challenges were more imposing – network suits were ready to pull the plug, the blue collar crew was in revolt and the network censor had never seen a script so transgressive. And Michaels had to wrangle a a group of artists, many whose egos and drug use were out of control.

Saturday Night’s cast members have the challenge of playing figures with whom the audience is extremely familiar – John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman. They’re all good. Dylan O’Brian kept making me me think I was watching the real 1970s version of Dan Ackroyd. Nicholas Braun captures the off-kilter talent of Andy Kaufman, and also plays a comically earnest Jim Henson.

Two performances stand out. Sennott is a revelation as SNL co-creator and head writer Rosie Shuster. Sennott’s Shuster is bright, sexy and charismatic; her command of situations, leavened with playfulness, is exactly what Lorne Michaels needs, as he is ever more confounded by unexpected crises.

J.K. Simmons is brilliant as Milton Berle, still feeling the entitlement of his TV superstardom, which, in 1975, was over 15 years in the past. Simmons dominates two of the greatest scenes in Saturday Night, the first as Berle cruelly dispenses a deserved comeuppance to Chevy Chase. In my personally favorite scene, Berle is taping an insipid variety show and mailing in his performance; just watch how Simmons’ Berle knows precisely how little effort he needs to put into a dance number.

Director Jason Reitman has delivered some the best movie comedies of the century. Saturday Night doesn’t have the depth of Reitman’s best (Juno, Up in the Air, Young Adult), but it’s entertaining. Saturday Night, a pretty good movie about a pivotal moment in our culture, is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in A REAL PAIN. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of the simmering French drama Endless Summer Syndrome and a highlight of TCM’s broadcast of the rare German neo-noir romance Black Gravel.

Awards are starting to trickle in for movies and performances that I have that I have championed. Slamdance awarded it documentary storytelling award to Sweetheart Deal. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has recognized the film Anora, Anora‘s Yura Borisov and A Real Pain:‘s Kieran Culkin.

REMEMBRANCE

In his second act, Marshall Brickman co-wrote Woody Allen’s two masterpieces: Annie Hall and Manhattan. Brickman had success before (creating Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent and co-writing The Muppets) and after (creating the Broadway shows Jersey Boys and The Addams Family).

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters.
  • Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters and now streaming.
  • Blitz: one brave, resourceful kid amid the horrors. AppleTV.
  • A Real Pain: whose pain is it? In theaters.
  • The Substance: the thinking woman’s Faust, if you can take the body horror. MUBI (free), Amazon, AppleTV.
  • Endless Summer Syndrome: there will be hell to pay. In arthouse theaters.
  • The Outrun: facing herself without the bottle. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandngo.
  • The Remarkable Life of Ibelin: totally unexpected. Netflix.
  • The Settlers: reckoning with the ugly past. MUBI.
  • Emilia Pérez: four women yearn amid Mexico’s drug violence. Netflix.
  • Kneecap: sláinte! Amazon, AppleTV.
  • Will & Harper: old friends adjust. Netflix.

WATCH AT HOME

From my Best Movies of 2024 – So Far:

ON TV

Ingmar Zeisberg and Helmut Wildt in BLACK GRAVEL

TODAY, Turner Classic Movies airs the super hard-to-find German neo-noir romance Black Gravel. It’s not streaming, so this is your best chance.

BLACK GRAVEL: too jaded for love?

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Ingmar Zeisberg and Helmut Wildt in BLACK GRAVEL

On December 14, Turner Classic Movies airs the super hard-to-find German neo-noir romance Black Gravel. It’s not streaming, so this is your best chance.

In the German film noir Black Gravel (Schwarzer Kies), Inge, the beautiful German wife of an American military base commander, runs into the shady hustler Robert, her former lover. He is one cynical dude and an asshole, but he doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Their reunion is bad for her, bad for him and bad for everyone.

The most common situation in film noir is a guy who falls for a dame (or a dame who falls for a guy) to his ruin. The sap is infatuated and thinks he’s in love. Here we have two characters and the question is whether they are really in love. Robert insists that he doesn’t love ANYONE, even as he is trying to rekindle the romance with Inge. Inge insists that it’s over. But is it over – for either of them? That’s what – in the end – Black Gravel is really all about – noir romance

In the last twenty minutes, the circumstances swivel. Rarely has a movie plot swung as rapidly between They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught.

Ingmar Zeisberg and Helmut Wildt in BLACK GRAVEL

Robert is played by Helmut Wildt, a German actor I hadn’t seen before. He is charismatic and confident, with a breezy swagger that reminds me of Ben Gazzara. The deeply conflicted Inge is played ably by Ingmar Zeisberg.

Anita Höfer, Helmut Wildt and Ingmar Zeisberg in BLACK GRAVEL

Black Gravel is set in a tiny German town corrupted by the presence of an US Air Force base, It’s the Phenix City of Germany, a sordid, trashy place. The character of Elli (Anita Höfer) is LITERALLY a slut.

Black Gravel is filled with tart observations of I Like Ike America, with its bland, conventional uniformity. The Germans are an amoral lot, reduced to leeching off the Americans. The Americans are clueless marks.

Helmut Wildt and Anita Höfer in BLACK GRAVEL

Note: A dog dies in the first minute of the film. I recommend that you don’t let this put you off this superb film; but, there it is, you’ve been warned.

The current version restores some bits that were cut from the film in 1961, supposedly as offensive to Jews. Those were probably the anti-semitic slurs uttered by unsympathetic characters; these slurs were not intended to debase Jews, but to illustrate the post-war continuation of antisemitism among Germans. (There’s some German racism in here, too). These are actually ANTI-antisemitic moments in the movie that were misunderstood at the time.

Unfortunately, it’s not streamable, but screenings can be booked from Kino Lorber, and it’s available for purchase in Blu-ray and DVD. I saw it at the 2020 Noir City.

Black Gravel was written and directed by Helmut Käutner. We don’t recognize this until late in the movie, but it turns out there’s no better noir romance than Black Gravel.

Helmut Wildt and Ingmar Zeisberg in BLACK GRAVEL

ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME: there will be hell to pay

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Photo caption: Frederika Milano and Gem Deger in ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME. Courtesy of NashFilm and Altered Innocence.

In the simmering French drama Endless Summer Syndrome, a professional couple and their two very attractive teenage kids are enjoying August, as upscale Parisians like to do, in a roomy, well-appointed country home. Their idyll is rocked when the mom is tipped off that the dad may be sexually involved with one of the adopted kids. She furtively investigates, trying to find out what is going on with whom. We know that there will be a reckoning once she finds out, but no one in the audience will guess the shattering ending.

First-time director and co-writer Kaveh Daneshmand keeps the tension roiling. All four actors give superb performances: Sophie Colon as the mom, Matheo Capelli as the dad, Frederika Milano as the daughter and Gem Deger as the son. Colon is especially effective, as the audience sees most of the developments (but not all) through her lens. I was surprised to learn that only one of the four actors (Capelli) has substantial film experience.

I screened Endless Summer Syndrome for the Nashville Film Festival. It releases into arthouse theaters this weekend.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov in ANORA. Courtesy of NEON.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of the brilliant but gory The Substance.

REMEMBRANCE

Lee Van Cleef and Earl Hollimon (right) in THE BIG COMBO

Earl Holliman had the confidence, in one of his first movies, to put a unique spin on the role of a mob henchman in 1955’s The Big Combo. He continued to play character roles in big movies: Giant, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and The Sons of Katie Elder. He went on to amass almost 100 credit in television, most popularly as Angie Dickinson’s boss in Policewoman/ most of his TV work was forgettable, but he did star in the first ever episode of The Twilight Zone.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters.
  • Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters.
  • The Substance: the thinking woman’s Faust, if you can take the body horror. MUBI (free), Amazon, AppleTV.
  • Blitz: one brave, resourceful kid amid the horrors. AppleTV.
  • A Real Pain: whose pain is it? In theaters.
  • The Outrun: facing herself without the bottle. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandngo.
  • The Remarkable Life of Ibelin: totally unexpected. Netflix.
  • The Settlers: reckoning with the ugly past. MUBI.
  • Emilia Pérez: four women yearn amid Mexico’s drug violence. Netflix.
  • Chasing Chasing Amy: the origins of love, fictional and otherwise. In theaters.
  • Kneecap: sláinte! Amazon, AppleTV.
  • Will & Harper: old friends adjust. Netflix.

WATCH AT HOME

From my Best Movies of 2024 – So Far:

ON TV

Patrick McGoohan and Paul Harris in ALL NIGHT LONG

On December 9, Turner Classic Movies airs the little seen All Night Long, one of my Overlooked Neo-noir. It’s Shakespeare’s Othello, set in the jazz world of 1962 London – and with music performed by Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck and other real jazz musicians. Patrick McGoohan is soars in the juicy Iago role – MacGoohan did devious scheming very well, and satisfyingly implodes when it all falls apart. His career was ascending, and he was only two years away from becoming a huge TV star with Secret Agent, to be followed by The Prisoner, possibly the most original show ever on television.

THE SUBSTANCE: the thinking woman’s Faust, if you can take the body horror

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Photo caption: Demi Moore in THE SUBSTANCE. Courtesy of MUBI.

Wow, this movie sizzles with originality and it’s a showcase for an emerging female filmmaker, but I’m not sure if you’ll want to watch it. In The Substance, writer-director Coralie Fargeat comments on all the perversity around the unrealistic ideals of female beauty by reimagining the classic Faustian bargain – what would you give up to restore physical youthfulness? Fargeat has made a sharply funny movie that melds the science fiction and horror genres. It’s absolutely brilliant, but some viewers may not be able to get past the body horror.

Elisabeth (Demi Moore) was a big movie star thirty years ago, and is now starring in a network fitness show (think Jane Fonda’s Workout franchise). Elisabeth is happy with her life until the male suits at the TV network tell that she’s passed her Sell By date and prepare to dump her for a younger, hotter starlet. The shock jars Elisabeth into a desperate spiral of body-loathing. Of course, this is absurd because I would describe Demi Moore as the world’s most beautiful 47-year-old woman, except she’s really 62.

Elisabeth finds a mysterious underground pharmaceutical (called The Substance) that will miraculously take 30 years off her appearance. There is a at least one catch. She has to inject a substance, which triggers the formation of a clone in a separate, younger body – but only for a week; then she needs to recover by re-inhabiting the older body. Off and on she goes, alternating weeks and the older and younger versions. Eventually, she learns about an even more significant side effect.

The clone is Sue (Margaret Qualley), who immediately is hired to replace Elisabeth on the show and vaults to stardom herself. With her celebrity, riches and stunning beauty, Sue’s life is pretty damn great – until each week is over. We soon realize that this is not going to end well for either Elisabeth or Sue.

There is a lot of body horror in The Substance, beginning with an icky “clone birth” scene and the weekly transitions between Elisabeth and Sue. The Substance ends with an over-the-top, splattering finale that makes Carrie look like a finger prick. It’s not going to work for most of my readers whom I know personally. I’m not a big horror fan and especially don’t care for body horror, but I’m glad I hung with it.

Margaret Qualley in THE SUBSTANCE. Courtesy of MUBI.

The Substance is the second feature for French writer-director Coralie Fargeat. Her first film Revenge (which I haven’t yet seen) won accolades as a feminist take on the rape revenge genre. To keep her right of final cut, Fargeat spurned Hollywood financing and made The Substance on spec. It is now the highest grossing film for MUBI, which bought the distribution rights. She knows what to do with the actors, the camera and the soundtrack, and is unafraid of coloring outside the lines. Wow, Fargeat is impressive.

The first three scenes are enrapturing. The first is an overhead shot of a broken egg, which is injected with a syringe and then clones a second yolk. The second scene is another overhead shot, this one of Elisabeth’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which traces the arc of her career. The third is of Elisabeth leaving the set of her show, as she absorbs the accolades of her stardom, the unwelcome birthday wishes and some rude hints to her aging out of being a sex symbol. Really smart storytelling.

Predictably, given my personal bias, I thought that the running time 2 hours, 20 minutes was too long, but it’s not like the movie dragged.

The male characters in The Substance are not very smart nor even minimally evolved; they are so broadly played that it’s even fun for men in the audience.

This is career-topping performance for Demi Moore, who , besides being uniquely physically perfect for the role, brings out all of Elisabeth’s yearnings and vulnerabilities – and her fraught ambivalence for continuing with The Substance. Moore is also a good sport about working under some some very extreme prosthetics.

Margaret Qualley always brings energy and magnetism to her performances, and she’s superb here as s Sue who, like Elisabeth, wants it all and wants it too much.

Dennis Quaid takes boorishness to new lows as a shamelessly sexist network boss. Quaid must have had lots of fun in this role, and he’s hilarious.

The Substance got a standing ovation at its premiere at Cannes, and won the People’s Choice Award at Toronto. The Substance is now streaming on Amazon and AppleTV, and it’s free on MUBI.

Movies to See Right Now – Thanksgiving Weekend Edition

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Photo caption: Mikey Madison in ANORA. Courtesy of NEON.

This week on The Movie Gourmet, new reviews of two historical dramas Steve McQueen’s WW II thriller Blitz and the grimly beautiful Chilean drama The Settlers. I’m not going to be writing about the two new Big Movies – Wicked (even though I always like Cynthia Erivo) and Gladiator II (the CGI rhino in he trailer looked too cheesy).

During the holidays, my WATCH AT HOME feature suspends its usual The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE and subs in films on my Best Movies of 2024 – So Far list; there are plenty of great movies from earlier this year that you can now stream at home.

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

From my Best Movies of 2024 – So Far:

ON TV

THE LIFE OF BRIAN

On November 29, Turner Classic Movies is airing one of the wittiest satires of all time, The Life of Brian. The guys from Monty Python send up the Greatest Story Ever Told, while skewering human nature, religion, sword-and-sandal epics, and, in its funniest scene, political correctness.

I just wrote about Peeping Tom, the best-ever psycho serial killer movie, and there goes TCM playing it again on November 30. If you have yet to see it, don’t miss it this time.